Audience measurement entities have looked for ways in which to track device usage, including software and application data, web-based data, device status, etc. Some exemplary systems and methods have been developed to this end, including U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/001,492, titled “Mobile Terminal And Method For Providing Life Observations And A Related Server Arrangement And Method With Data Analysis, Distribution And Terminal Guiding” filed Mar. 9, 2009, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/002,205, titled “System And Method For Behavioral And Contextual Data Analytics,” filed Mar. 8, 2009, and Int'l Pat. Pub. No. WO 20111161303 titled “Network Server Arrangement for Processing Non-Parametric, Multi-Dimensional Spatial And Temporal Human Behavior Or Technical Observations Measured Pervasively, And Related Method For The Same,” filed Jun. 24, 2010. Each of these documents is assigned to the assignee of the present application and is incorporated by reference in its entirety herein.
While such methods have shown a certain level of success in tracking device usage, most conventional device usage tracking systems do not provide the level of detail needed on the device level. For devices that have utilized lower-level device tracking, the tracking software requires a portion that collects the information on the wireless device to be executed outside a context of an operating system of the wireless device. Furthermore, the software tracking portion is embedded within a firmware layer and a kernel layer of the wireless device, which may be incompatible with security protocols of certain operating systems. One example of such a system may be found in U.S. Pat. No. 8,014,726 to Petersen et al., titled “Method and System for Collecting Wireless Information Transparently and Non-Intrusively,” issued Sep. 6, 2011, which is incorporated by reference in its entirety herein.
Certain operating systems, like Android OS, are developed on Linux kernel and inherit the security model of Linux. In particular, Android OS treats Android application package as non-privileged user. Each Android package has a unique Linux user ID assigned to it during installation. This has the effect of sandboxing the process and resources it creates, so that it can't affect, or be affected by, other applications. The security model creates a problem for monitoring application when the monitoring software application cannot see other applications, such as browser software URL data, directly without the other application opening up specific interfaces for monitoring. Currently, browser applications may not offer an interface for monitoring by another application. What is needed is an efficient and easy-to-implement configuration for monitoring web traffic while minimizing the impact on underlying OS security features.